WASHINGTON -- The prestigious Chicago Council on Foreign Relations issued a survey the other day on how Americans rate the 10 American presidents since the end of World War II on their conduct of foreign policy.
No. 1, astonishingly, was William Jefferson Clinton. John F. Kennedy, who stared down the nuclear barrel in the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, came in second.
Ronald Reagan, who achieved notable nuclear arms control pacts with the Soviet Union and, his supporters contend, forced it into bankruptcy, was third.
Bush's record
George Bush, the architect of the Western coalition that drove Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait and president when the Berlin Wall came down, was fourth.
The list goes on: No. 5 -- Harry Truman, who presided over the Marshall Plan that put Western Europe back on its feet. No. 6 -- Dwight Eisenhower, who "got us out of Korea." No. 7 -- Richard Nixon, who opened the door to China. No. 8 -- Jimmy Carter, who negotiated a breakthrough peace between Egypt and Israel. Rounding out the list was the Vietnam-plagued Lyndon Johnson at 9 and brief caretaker Gerald Ford at 10.
Why is Mr. Clinton at the top of the list, when his most notable foreign-policy actions have been starts and stops in Haiti, Bosnia and Kosovo, empty threats against Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, tolerating continued heavy drug-trafficking from Mexico and turning the other cheek toward rampant human rights violations in China?
Only five years ago, when the last Chicago Council survey was taken, Mr. Clinton finished a lowly eighth, ahead of only LBJ and Mr. Ford. So what happened? The answer apparently is nothing much, and to an American public weary of the nearly half century Cold War, that seems to have been enough.
"It is difficult to point to specific issues on which the president has scored decisive policy successes," the Council report acknowledges, "since the public appears largely underwhelmed or even unaware of his specific achievements.
Whereas President Bush could point to his success in handling relations with the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War among other things, for positive perceptions of his foreign policy record, President Clinton's success seems to ride on the absence of large, looming problems on the international front in the minds of the public."
An even more telling commentary on the public's judgment about foreign affairs was the survey's finding that the most common response to the question of which are the biggest foreign-policy questions facing the country was "Don't know."
As a result, the Council report says, "The public appears to associate the perceived absence of international crises affecting them with the successful handling of foreign policy."
Groping for an explanation of President Clinton's rating as the best foreign-policy president since the end of World War II, the Council suggests that Secretary of State Madeleine Albright may have pulled Mr. Clinton up on her coattails.
It notes that she rates much higher with the public than her predecessor, Warren Christopher, and even suggests that the president's generally high poll ratings "in the face of impeachment" may have helped his image as a world leader. Go figure.
Mind boggling
What makes all this so mind-boggling is the fact that in another poll, by the Washington Post and ABC News, voters say they would prefer having the Republicans rather than Clinton Democrats in charge of foreign affairs, by 46 percent to 38. This may help explain the intensity of recent attacks on Mr. Clinton by congressional Republicans and GOP presidential candidates over the tardy discovery of suspected espionage by China against American nuclear research facilities in the 1980s.
Sen. John McCain of Arizona has been particularly vocal against the Clinton administration in this regard.
It is often said that no president is likely to achieve greatness in the history books unless he has confronted and solved a major national crisis, usually in the foreign-policy field.
But with Bill Clinton running No. 1 as the best foreign-policy president in at least one poll by a serious sponsor, who knows?
Jack W. Germond and Jules Witcover write from the Washington Bureau.
Pub Date: 3/22/99